The public inquiry into historical child sex abuse is being undermined by the establishment to stop the truth emerging, Britain’s biggest victims’ group has said.

The Shirley Oaks Survivors Association made the claim after the most senior lawyer working for the £100m inquiry, Ben Emmerson QC, was suspended.

The leader of SOSA - which represents former Lambeth children’s home residents and was formed following a Mirror investigation - said forces in the government do not want the inquiry to continue because of what it will reveal.

Raymond Stevenson, who was also in the care of the south London borough as a child, said: “One hundred per cent this is part of an effort to stop the truth coming out.

“They want to cover it up and stall it. We can show the links to the cover-up and the government in the past and they don’t want it to come out.”

He said the Home Office was one of the institutions that had failed children in care in Lambeth in the past - and that the scale of its presence in the inquiry staff represented a conflict of interest.

Read More

The inquiry has been beset by a series of problems since it was originally announced by then Home Secretary Theresa May two years ago.

Professor Alexis Jay is the fourth person appointed to lead the investigation in the wake of Baroness Butler-Sloss, Fiona Woolf and Dame Lowell Goddard QC.

Inquiry has been beset by problems since it was announced two years ago (Image: Getty)

Mr Stevenson, who has worked closely with the Mirror, said: “People really need to think about what it is that’s underneath the carpet and we have discovered it in our investigation.

We know what it is and why they don’t want it to come out and Ben is just another casualty of this inquiry that is set up to fail.”

He added: “People have got to start waking up. There are things we discovered about the involvement of some government organisations that are part of this inquiry that is too sensitive for them to allow to come out.”

The cover up of child sex abuse in Lambeth, south London, forms one of 13 strands being examined by the inquiry.